Field
Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to a system and method to manage communication sessions in an enterprise and particularly to a system and method for managing communication interrupts during a communication session.
Description of Related Art
Contact centers are employed by many enterprises to service, inbound and outbound contacts or customers. A primary objective of contact center management is to ultimately maximize contact center performance and profitability. An ongoing challenge in contact center administration is monitoring and optimizing contact center efficiency usage of its available resources. The contact center efficiency is generally measured by metrics such as Service Level Agreement (‘SLA’), Customer Satisfaction (‘CSAT’), and match rate. Contact center resources may include, agents, communication assets (e.g., number of voice trunks, number and bandwidth of video trunks, etc.), computing resources (e.g., a speed, a queue length, a storage space, etc.), and so forth.
Service level is one measurement of the contact center efficiency. Service level is typically determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted within a specified period by the number accepted plus number that were not accepted, but completed in some other way (e.g., abandoned, given busy, canceled, flowed out). Service level definitions may vary from one enterprise to another.
Match rate is another indicator used in measuring the contact center efficiency. Match rate is usually determined by dividing the number of contacts accepted by a primary skill level agent within a period of time by the number of contacts accepted by any agent in a queue over the same period. An agent with a primary skill level is one who typically may manage contacts of a certain nature more effectively and/or efficiently as compared to an agent of lesser skill level.
There are other contact center agents who may not be as proficient as the primary skill level agent, and those agents are identified either as skill level agents or backup skill level agents. As can be appreciated, contacts received by a primary skill level agent are typically managed more quickly and accurately or effectively (e.g., higher revenue attained) than a contact received by a secondary or even backup skill level agent. Thus, it is an objective of most contact centers to optimize match rate along with the service level.
In addition to service level and match rate performance measures, contact centers use other Key Performance Indicators (‘KPIs’), such as revenue, estimated, actual, or predicted wait time, average speed of answer, throughput, agent utilization, agent performance, agent responsiveness and the like, to calculate performance relative to their Service Level Agreements (‘SLAs’). Operational efficiency is achieved when the KPIs are managed near, but not above, SLA threshold levels.
Throughput is a measure of the number of contacts/contact requests or work requests that may be processed in a given amount of time. Agent utilization is a measure of how efficiently the agents' time is being used. Customer service level is a measure of the time customers spend waiting for their work to be managed. Company contact center customers wish to provide service to as many requests as possible in a given amount of time, using the least number of agents to do so, and minimizing the wait time for their customers that may increase the Service Level Agreement (‘SLA’) of the contact center. Further, the contact center may also have to maintain the Customer Satisfaction (‘CSAT’) metrics in order to maintain the KPIs of the contact center. For this purpose, agents may have to maintain the quality of services provided to the customers through multimedia (e.g., voice contacts, video contacts, emails, etc.).
In a multimedia conference environment, a resource can be contacted via multiple ways via, for example, a voice call, a video call, a text message, a web chat, and so forth. Also, a resource of the contact center can simultaneously work on more than one communication session such as a resource can manage a voice call and two emails simultaneously. While managing the communication session, the resource can be distracted when a communication interrupt is received. The communication interrupt can be a new incoming communication session from another customer of the contact center.
For example, a resource can receive a communication interrupt such as an Instant Messaging (IM) at a precise moment when the resource is already handling a video session of a customer. In another exemplary scenario, a resource is handling a conference voice session with multiple customers, and an Instant Messaging (IM) is received from one of the customers who can take the conference session into a different direction, which can further distract the resource while providing services to the customers of the conference communication session. In some cases, resources of the contact center may desire to be interruptible during a communication session but not at the precise moment when they are speaking.
In conventional techniques, resources can disable desktop applications that can potentially interrupt them while managing communication sessions. However, this may not be an ideal solution, as the resources may desire to receive communication interrupts while handling communication sessions when a frequency of communication during the communication session between a customer and the resource is less. Also, the resources may re-enable the desktop applications after completing communication sessions. However, these techniques require manual intervention of the resource and further, the resources forget to enable and/or disable the desktop applications. Also, audio interference can also be caused when a communication interrupt, such as an email, is received by a resource on a limited bandwidth network.
There is thus a need for a system and method for managing communication interrupts during a communication session in an enterprise in a more efficient manner.